Editing Xenomorph (section)

====Egg====
Adult xenomorphs are capable of creating their own reproductive egg ('ovamorph') by [[Pupa#Cocoon|embedd]]ing their prey into an organic substance that (in theory) metabolically reacts to merge host-parasite [[DNA|genetic material]]. The entire process is xeno-dominant, resulting in a facehugger. The eggs laid by the queen are ellipsoidal, leathery objects between one-half and one meter (two and three feet) high with a four-lobed opening at the top. The eggs can remain in a stasis mode for years, possibly indefinitely, until nearby movement is detected. As a potential host approaches, the egg's lobes unfold like flower petals, and the parasitic facehugger extracts itself from the egg and attaches itself to the potential host.

Giger initially designed the eggs with a much more obvious vaginal appearance, complete with an "inner and outer vulva".<ref name="littlegiger">[http://www.littlegiger.com/articles/files/Cinefantastique_09_01.pdf H. R. Giger Alien Design by Frederic Albert Levy], p.36</ref> The producers complained that Catholic countries would ban the film if the allusion was too strong, so Giger doubled the lobes to four so that, in his words, "seen from above, they would form the cross that people in Catholic countries are so fond of looking at".<ref name="littlegiger" />

The interior of the original egg was composed of "Nottingham lace" ([[caul fat]]), which is the lining of a cow's stomach. In the first film, the quick shot of the facehugger erupting from the egg was done with sheep's intestine.<ref name="doc" /> Initially, the egg remained totally stationary except for the hydraulic movement of the lobes; however, by ''Alien Resurrection'', the entire egg was made to ripple as it opened. In the Director's Cut of ''Alien'', an additional scene shows still living crew members being cocooned into new eggs, either morphing into a new embryo or acting as a food source for the facehugger inside the egg.{{citation needed|date=June 2019}} According to the novelization for ''Resurrection'', the Egg, in and of itself, could be considered a living organism in its own right.